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Originally Posted by dcb
Equation, there are a few issues to consider when swerving to avoid an accident.
1. You risk a head-on collision.
2. Your liability goes up. I had a friend who swereved to miss the car that cut him off and hit a lamp post, and was liable for the repairs to the lamp post.
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Once again, it depends on the situation. you cannot deny that braking severely impairs the maneuvering ability of a vehicle. frankly, your friend did the right thing by swerving if braking alone would have found him hitting the opposing car head on or in a T-bone, which is what would have happened in my own case. hopefully they came out of the accident OK.
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Still it should be obvious that your reaction time remains constant but you will cover more ground if you go faster. So at a faster rate of speed your margin of safety is reduced regardless of when the deer jumps out in front of you.
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actually the act of shifting your foot from accelerator to brake
increases your reaction time, thus reducing the time and distance you have to brake (or do anything else), increasing the amount of brake force you have to apply. the weight transfer that takes place basically commits you to a straight line path, so if you lose traction for any reason you are boned. braking while in a curve is an
ABSOLUTE no-no unless you have no other choice at all. it is the single fastest path to snap oversteer or worse, snap understeer. if you have trained your responses correctly, maneuvering is
usually safer. the vast majority of people are not properly trained, hence why the misconception that braking is always safer.
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The number of people who can slow down is a billion times more than the number of people who can be taught to drive better.
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there is no substitute for proper driver training. to be honest the typical american model of driver education is equivalent to no training at all.